“Miss Winters, it was Abigail Collins who first recognized you as being a witch, wasn’t it?”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” says our learned colleague in the red robe, “we have had quite enough bickering between the two of you.”
You see? It’s not just me. Today’s episode has been on for less two minutes, and already everyone seems weary and put-upon. This witchcraft trial storyline is going to kill us all.
Victoria Winters, the time-traveling governess, has been visiting the year 1795 for the past few months, getting herself in more and more trouble every time she opens her mouth. By now, she’s already talked herself halfway to getting hanged; if she keeps this up, somebody’s going to invent the rocket-launcher 150 years too early, just to get her to pipe down.
I’m having a really hard time trying to follow how this make-believe 1795 witchcraft law is supposed to work. Every time I think I understand what they’re saying, they use words like “evidence”, and they lose me again.
Here, see what you make of this. Abigail Collins died mysteriously yesterday, and Reverend Trask is trying to pin a murder charge on Vicki. She’s being represented by Peter Bradford, boy detective, whose defense strategy mostly involves scowling and yelling.
Judge: There has not been sufficient evidence to warrant an additional charge of murder against the defendant.
Trask: And what would the court consider to be sufficient evidence?
The Judge mulls this over, like nobody’s ever asked this before.
Judge: If the prosecution can produce a witness to support its allegations that the defendant had reason to kill Miss Collins, the court would be willing to hear such testimony.
Which is just… what? How is that even evidence? I call no way.
But wait, it gets weirder.
Peter: Your honor, if Victoria Winters were going to kill Abigail Collins, doesn’t it stand to reason that she would have done it before Abigail testified, not after?
Judge: Your point is a logical one, Mr. Bradford. Unfortunately, human actions are not always based on such logic.
So it turns out that some TV shows know how to do trial scenes, and some of them just don’t. This is not part of the Dark Shadows skill set. Fortunately, they’re aware of this, and it’s a long time before we see the inside of a Collinsport courtroom again. Unfortunately, here we are now, waist-deep in this quicksand plot point, and it’s going to take them a minute to extricate.
So clearly we’re going to have to provide our own entertainment value today. For example: admiring the variety of different ways that Peter can scowl.
The court takes a recess while Trask goes out and finds somebody who’s willing to say that Vicki didn’t like Abigail. Since nobody liked Abigail, this should only take about three minutes; maybe four, if he stops to get a soda from the vending machine in the hall.
“What we need is a witness of our own!” Peter says, still scowling. “Somebody who can prove that you didn’t hate Abigail enough to kill her!”
But there’s nothing sensible you can say in response to a statement like that, so they just sigh and shuffle around, and wait for the scene to end. Then they break for a word from Ken-L Ration dog food.
But at least this storyline has Reverend Trask in it, and he’s always worth watching, because he is eternally on the verge of saying something crazy. This is how he opens his examination of Vicki.
Trask: Miss Winters… it was Abigail Collins who first recognized you as being a witch, wasn’t it?
Of course, Peter objects and the judge sustains, but who even cares. Keep talking, Trask; you’re saving the whole storyline. He starts over.
Trask: It was Abigail Collins who first accused you of being a witch, was it not?
Vicki: Yes.
Trask: What was your reaction to that?
Vicki: I tried to convince her that it wasn’t true.
Trask: Didn’t you hate her for what she was trying to do to you?
Vicki: No!
Trask: Come, now, Miss Winters, you’re not going to tell the court that you loved her.
Vicki: Well, no, but —
Trask: Then you must have HATED her! Enough to KILL her!
So that’s fun. But, really, the problem is that there’s nothing at stake in these clearly non-legal proceedings. There are no rules in this courtroom at all, no standard of evidence that can tip the scales of justice one way or the other. They just stand around and say things, and then they squabble, and the judge tells them to behave, and when they’ve done that for enough episodes, then the verdict will be whatever they want it to be.
Come on, come on! Let’s go do something else. Case dismissed!
Tomorrow: Down Our Throats.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
A lot of the actors stumble over their lines in today’s episode, including:
Trask: Your honor, the medical record also makes it clear that… that Mrs., uh, Miss Collins was, uh, in perfect health! Her — her heart had never bothered her once in her life!
Peter: All he has to do is find someone who’s… who’s willing to prove that you had a good reason for saying that — for killing Abigail Collins!
Peter: Is Lieutenant Collins — Lieutenant Forbes a man of his word?
Judge: Who is this new whitman — witness, Mr. Trask?
Peter: Under what circumstances did you have most of your conversations with Miss Collins? [He means Miss Winters.]
There’s also a moment in Peter’s scene with Nathan where Peter just completely loses track of where he is. Amusingly, this happens just as he starts using the word “remember”:
Peter: You remember that Abigail Collins was the first person to accuse Miss Winters of being a witch.
Nathan: Yes.
Peter: You also remember that, uh… (He trails off. Nathan just looks at him.) Look… you were the only one willing to help her, weren’t you?
Tomorrow: Down Our Throats.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
I’m Team Trask all the way. Did the fans actually LIKE Roger Davis? Unbelievable. Also FYI HULU + is noe streaming season 6 of Dark Shadows – I think they only had 1-5 until recently. Maybe more are on the way.
Dan Curtis liked Roger Davis. Davis was the first cast member to come back and play another role on the show after his first character had been killed off.
He seems to be well received by the fans at conventions. It was fellow cast members who didn’t like him, particularly the female actors. Joan Bennett had this to say about him: “He thinks that he’s Henry Fonda – except he has no talent.”
One reason the female actors didn’t like Roger Davis is that he’d loom over them or invade their personal space, messing up the camera blocking so he’d be more prominent in the shot! (Sometimes the ladies would be out of the shot entirely!)
The one time he tried this with Grayson Hall, she not only refused to budge, but also ground her high heel into his foot and explained in detail just what would happen to him if he EVER tried pulling that stunt on her again!! 😜
Actually I think Thayer David was the first actor to “come back from the dead.” He died as Matthew Morgan, then returned as Ben Stokes.
You are correct, sir or madam.
Oh dear, I thought Roger Davis was handsome, but in my defense I was 15 at the time.
I remember him from Alias Smith & Jones, about the only western I liked as a kid, and watched with my dad, so I was pretty disappointed to hear the negative stories from the DS cast.
“Where did you learn law, Mr. Bradford”
“I am a graduate of the Dewey, Chetham and Howe law school. Let me demonstrate my eye poke.”
call me slow, but i just realized jerry lacy played the bogart in woody allen’s movie ‘play it again, sam’. wow my mind is blown.
I’ve been reading along with DS Every Day as I’m rewatching the show for the fifth? sixth? time — love it! I actually met Roger Davis at a DS convention in the 80s, I was a volunteer and helping out at the registration table. OMG what a charmer! I had to keep reminding myself that he was that awful overactor who yelled all the time. Then again, it was just a two minute conversation, not long enough for him to get truly annoying.
Davis said in an interview that he never looked at the TelePrompTer, so evident here.
Until he did.
Meanwhile, he did a lot of Friddy Improv to get through.
Most times, the other actors would be silent, and just let him die out there.
Nathan saved him once with, “I don’t know what you mean.”, but most just stared.
Rightfully so.
He also looked at the Teleprompter several times in his very first scene, back in #404. That really stood out- it usually took the actors a while before they gave up on memorizing their lines; not even Jonathan Frid started looking at the Teleprompter until he’d been on the show for a week or two.
Victoria’s trial is definitely the low point of 1795.
At the end of the first scene, the judge calls recess and Trask moves off, collecting his notes on the way to the door.
He pauses just before he leaves, appears to come to a decision, and smiles to himself. Then he turns, purses his lips at Peter in a decidedly flirty manner, an slinks off.
For a moment, it looks like Peter’s going to follow him… until Vicki starts yapping in his general direction.
I can’t help it… this twisted ‘ship is on the move, and I’m caught up in its wake…
Roger Davis mentions in the DVD extra that he was married to Jaclyn Smith. I find that astounding. Just the couple of minutes of interview gave me the impression that Davis was an asshole. Committing to a lifetime with him? Widows’ Hill, here I come.
Frid, at least, tries to improvise something when he loses his place. Davis just comes to a dead stop.
Roger Davis was at his worst in this episode. He practically blew every other line!
This episode is all “truth over facts.” And whoever can make the judge and jury believe their truth wins. Super frustrating to watch as a modern person who assumes there is law and due process. They keep saying evidence, but all I see is circumstantial crap that Peter just lets slide by. Vicki is still saying, “but why?” everytime Peter has a new idea. Maybe she’ll finally figure it all out when the noose is around her neck? It really insults our intelligence. Now people in the 60s must have been taking Civics and Government. They must have known the difference between a trial and a bunch of mumbo jumbo. They couldn’t have been completely naive. I wonder if they felt their intelligence was being insulted!
Truth is not facts.
Feelings are not facts.
Evidence could be facts.
Proven facts are facts.
And I thought spectral evidence had been outlawed in courtrooms by then! I guess I was wrong, or they just conveniently forgot for the sake of the script and pushing the story along. Ggrrrrr
Ugh! I forgot how tedious this witch trial was!
Vicki never really had a chance; evidence of witchcraft can be anything you want it to be. The defense is trying to prove a negative, like trying to prove there’s no God. I don’t know how accurately the trial sequence portrays what passed for due process in 18th century courts, but I’m a little heartened that the judge seems to be groping toward some codified system of logic and evidence. It’s also encouraging to remember that in the 17th century witchcraft trials, not EVERYBODY was found guilty; the officials had some sort of evidentiary standards. But of course, defendants back then didn’t have to account for anachronistic artifacts, they didn’t have genuine magical witches plotting against them, and they didn’t have vampires complicating matters by leaving dead bodies lying around.
And they probably didn’t have defendants who constantly said the wrong thing and perpetually dug her own grave deeper and deeper.
I’m skeptical as to how many of us, under the exact same circumstances that Vicki experiences in this storyline, would demonstrate her degree of composure and selflessness; attempting to prevent the deaths of people she didn’t know–some of whom didn’t even like her–at great risk to her own safety.